VMWare Workstation on Ubuntu 7.04

After upgrading my Ubuntu installation from 6.10 to 7.04, vmware workstation stopped working. I downloaded the latest VMWare 5.5.4 with no improvement. Then I found this article which fixed the problem in a few seconds!

Just in case the article goes away, I’ll post the instructions here as well:

From the vmware-distrib directory, do the following:

# cd lib/modules/source/
# cp vmmon.tar vmmon.tar.bck
# tar -xvf vmmon.tar
# vim vmmon-only/include/compat_kernel.h

Change the line with:

static inline _syscall1(int, compat_exit, int, exit_code);

to:

/* static inline _syscall1(int, compat_exit, int, exit_code); */

Tar the directory to vmmon.tar:

# chmod 755 vmmon.tar
# tar -cvf vmmon.tar vmmon-only

Finally, go back to vmware distrib directory:

# cd ../../../

Rebuild:

# sudo ./vmware-install.pl


The error messages that indicate the problem for which this fix should work are as follows:


Using 2.6.x kernel build system.
make: Entering directory `/tmp/vmware-config1/vmmon-only'
make -C /usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.20-15-386/include/.. SUBDIRS=$PWD SRCROOT=$PWD/. modules
make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.20-15-386'
CC [M] /tmp/vmware-config1/vmmon-only/linux/driver.o
In file included from /tmp/vmware-config1/vmmon-only/linux/driver.c:80:
/tmp/vmware-config1/vmmon-only/./include/compat_kernel.h:21: error: expected declaration specifiers or ‘...’ before ‘compat_exit’
/tmp/vmware-config1/vmmon-only/./include/compat_kernel.h:21: error: expected declaration specifiers or ‘...’ before ‘exit_code’
/tmp/vmware-config1/vmmon-only/./include/compat_kernel.h:21: warning: type defaults to ‘int’ in declaration of ‘_syscall1’
make[2]: *** [/tmp/vmware-config1/vmmon-only/linux/driver.o] Error 1
make[1]: *** [_module_/tmp/vmware-config1/vmmon-only] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.20-15-386'
make: *** [vmmon.ko] Error 2
make: Leaving directory `/tmp/vmware-config1/vmmon-only'
Unable to build the vmmon module.

Execution aborted.